Top Expert on Food Safety to Speak at Keiser Distinguished Lecture Series

Feb 22, 2008

Dr. Carl K. Winter will be the featured guest speaker at the first Keiser Distinguished Lectureship in Life Sciences at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 11. Winter will also present a musical performance, "Still Stayin' Alive: A Musical Look at Contemporary Food Safety Issues" at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 13. Both events will take place in Ohio Northern University's Freed Center for the Performing Arts and are free and open to the public.

Dr. Carl K. Winter will be the featured guest speaker at the first Keiser Distinguished Lectureship in Life Sciences at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 11. Winter will also present a musical performance, "Still Stayin' Alive: A Musical Look at Contemporary Food Safety Issues" at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 13. Both events will take place in Ohio Northern University's Freed Center for the Performing Arts and are free and open to the public.

During his four-day campus visit, Winter will speak to biology and law students about his extensive research concerning food safety.

Named in honor of professor and ONU alumnus Terry D. Keiser, the Keiser Distinguished Lectureship in Life Sciences brings nationally prominent life sciences scholars to ONU's campus each year to lecture and interact with students. The Keiser Lectureship is the first program of its kind at Ohio Northern.

"We are honored to have Dr. Winter as the first guest speaker of the lecture series," said Keiser, chairman and professor of biological studies. "The intent of the lecture series is to provide guests with a wide knowledge on life sciences that will benefit our students in the field they are studying."

Dr. Winter is the director of the FoodSafe Program and is an extension food toxicologist in the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of California at Davis. His research and outreach work focus on pesticide residues and naturally occurring toxins in foods.

Winter has authored two books and 100 publications covering such diverse topics as pesticide residues, risk assessment, risk communication, mycotoxins, plant toxins, organic foods and food safety education. He has frequently been invited to testify before the U.S. Congress on pesticide/food safety issues. He also has served as a consultant to the National Academy of Sciences, as chairperson of the Institute of Food Technologists' Food Science Communicators and as a member of the United Nations/World Health Organization's Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives.

To further spread his message, Winter combines his food safety expertise with his considerable musical talents to create "food safety music." Armed with a synthesizer, Winter has created a series of humorous, yet effective, parodies of popular songs, replacing the original lyrics with food safety messages. Song topics included bacterial contamination, irradiation, biotechnology, government regulation and pesticides. To date, Winter has distributed more than 20,000 self-produced audio CDs.

Winter's unique musical approach has led the news media to dub him the "Elvis of E. coli," the "Sinatra of Salmonella" and the "Artist Formerly Known as Prince of Pesticides." In all, his music has been featured by more than 75 major news sources, including USA Today, National Public Radio, Canadian Broadcast Corporation, Discovery Channel, Good Housekeeping and the Chicago Tribune.

In 2003, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Health Promotion and Public Health Education recognized Winter with a Hod Ogden Medal. This medal acknowledged Winter's imaginative and creative efforts to positively influence the advancement of health promotion. In addition, the USDA recently awarded Winter a grant to study the effectiveness of incorporating music into existing food safety educational curricula.

Winter holds a Ph.D. in agricultural and environmental chemistry and a bachelor of science in environmental toxicology, both from the University of California at Davis.